Demolitions in Uttarakhand this month, after which five were killed in violence, follow a pattern we can see in the BJP states. The pattern is, of course, that the government is being used to go after citizens, especially Muslims.
These demolitions have been carried out as a form of extrajudicial punishment by the municipal authorities and the police, either following episodes of communal violence or leading to protests against discrimination.
This pattern has been documented in reports like ‘Routes of Wrath: Weaponising Religious Processions’ (April 2022), put together by the Citizens and Lawyers Initiative. In his foreword, former Supreme Court justice Rohinton Nariman wrote that the report corroborates a decline in Indian democratic values: “it finds that in nine states of this country, during Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti celebrations in April 2022, there were widespread acts of hooliganism and violence.”
After this, the JCBs came out.
A report by Amnesty International, of which I am the India chair, has found similar patterns of people being rendered homeless and deprived of their livelihoods. These individuals were subjected to forced evictions, intimidation and unlawful force by the police and to collective and arbitrary punishment, which undermined their rights to non-discrimination, adequate housing and a fair trial.
Muslim-concentrated localities were either chosen or Muslim-owned properties were selectively targeted in diverse areas for demolitions. Adjacent or nearby Hindu-owned properties that also allegedly encroached on public lands, were left untouched, particularly in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.
The Indian state’s rationalisation........